


Dune: Paul’s Women, Chapter 12 (Book II)

by Wodric



Series: Dune: Paul’s Women [26]
Category: Dune (1984), Dune - All Media Types, Dune Series - Frank Herbert, Frank Herbert's Dune (2000)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Incest, Masturbation, Mother-Son Relationship, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 04:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14324583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wodric/pseuds/Wodric
Summary: Chapter’s Summary:Paul and Jessica develop their relation with Chani.Jamis funerary ceremony.See chapter 11 (Book II): https://archiveofourown.org/works/14324511See chapter 13 (Book II): https://archiveofourown.org/works/16742869





	Dune: Paul’s Women, Chapter 12 (Book II)

Paul’s Atreides Women

Book Two: MUAD’DIB

 

Chapter 12

 

God created Arrakis to train the faithful.

\- from "The Wisdom of Muad’Dib" by the Princess Irulan

 

After the excitement of the night the cave begun to calm down. The Fremen divided in small groups, most still speaking about the fight.

Paul still in his fighting trunks seated down near the cozy place where he had slept the previous night. Chani leaned her head on his shoulder and laid his hand in his bare chest drawing invisible lines in his skin, her hair, loose, falling over him.

Jessica heard them speak softly and hesitated to approach.

They sense her closeness and looked up. Paul smiled and Jessica relaxed, after all he was not upset with her. Chani also smiled to her. She had such a beautiful smile:

“His skin is so smooth… it is a skin full of water…” her lips brushed his shoulder.

Jessica agreed.

“Lie down, mother…” invited her son raisin his right hand to her.

She seated on her knees and like Chani leaned her head towards Paul shoulder while her son embraced both women, one on each side. Jessica covered the three with her robe and begun to draw invisible lines in her son’s naked chest with her index finger, imitating Chani, tickling him. Sometimes their fingers clashed and the two women giggled without apparent reason, as only two young girls can do.

After a while the three laid back. Jessica undressed her stillsuit and maintained only her tunic, but she let the straps fall and rolled it down to her waist, so she could embrace her son and press her bare breasts against his side chest. Chani also undressed the stillsuit, and then stared at Jessica’s bosom for a while under the robe’s cover. She blushed. raised her hand to one of the tunic’s straps and put it down… then… hesitated… looked to her smaller breasts and change her mind, raised the strap again and said:

“I will get some food to us…”

Mother and soon looked as she walked away at the glowglobes dim light. Her hips bouncing under the short tunic, the buttocks almost visible under it.

Paul played with his mother’s hair, “She thought to remove her tunic…” said Paul still lost with the expectation. Her mother smiled, kissed his shoulder and her hand stopped drawing invisible lines in his chest. She moved it down and put it on his fighting trunks.

“You like her…” she murmured in his hear felling his strong member under the trunks’ fabric.

“I also like your breasts pressed against my chest.”

Chani returned with food. They all seated down in a narrow circle, sharing the food. Jessica used her robe to cover herself. With her movements, sometimes the robe opened a while and she saw Chani’s curious eyes peeking.

Jessica opened the robe and raised her right arm placing it softy on the girl’s shoulder, dragging the robe to cover them. Her right breast brushed Chani’s arm and the girl trembled.

“Why were you staring at me, Chani?”

“I… I am not used to see women’s bare breasts… and yours are full…” she turned her head to them, to stare at them again, then she look to Paul in embarrassment “So full of water… so much bigger than mine…”

Jessica laughed amazed.

“You know that there is not only water in them…” on purpose she made her breast brush the girls arm again, then her tunic. Their breasts meet for a moment, their nipples meet, only with the tunic in between, Chani’s body quivered again, “do you want to draw invisible lines in them?”

“No…” she said without any confidence.

“Very well…” Jessica got closer and her breasts were crushed against Chani’s body. The older woman kissed slightly the younger in her face, “We will draw on Paul’s chest…” she pushed him so he could lay back again. The volume in his trunks was considerable, even Chani could notice it. Both women lay down again beside him. His mother’s bigger tits caressing his skin directly, Chani’s smaller but perkier breasts still covered by her tunic. Paul purred wrapping both women with his arms, caressing their hairs.

After a while Jessica asked:

“Do you want to see it?” putting her hand on the wedge of the trunks.

Chani blushed. Even in the half-darkness Paul could notice it.

“No…” she showed a shy smile. 

Paul kissed her in her forehead, than in her nose.

“You can see it if you want…” he said.

“No, I can’t.” she raised his head a bit and shook it, “You don’t understand… not without my father’s permission. I need his permission to mate. That is the rule among the Fremen. And I never asked him…”

Paul calmed her down.

“Don’t worry. You will ask him when the time comes. For now let us just enjoy our closeness and we can get some sleep”

Chani nodded and smiled to both of them. She rested again her head on Paul’s shoulder. Nested against him to a point that he could feel her erect nipples on his side chest. The three of them were comfortable and warm and soon they felt asleep.

But the positions lead Paul to much stress. At midday he tried to move. His erection wanted to get out of his trunks. Chani’s face was still resting on his shoulder. By her soft breath he knew she was still asleep. But his mother had tensed up when she felt his moves. She had awakened. The two changed a stare. She asked an unspoken question, he nodded affirmatively and her right hand released his cock from the trunks.

He expelled the air from the lungs with relief. Her hand caressed his shaft brushing her fingers up and down his soft gentile skin. Then she gripped with strength. He almost jumped but achieved to say still, so he wouldn’t awake Chani. He couldn’t move, he just couldn’t move a bit because he didn’t want to awake her. She stirred on his shoulder but her breath was regular again.

But Jessica begun to pump him, wanting to extract water from his testicles. Paul’s right arm went down, and his hand caressed Jessica’s back, her spine, then further down, passing her rolled tunic, and he grabbed an ass check, and played with a finger in her path between the two giant twins, trying to reach her butt hole.

They quickly made a mother-son code. If he tried to insert the tip of his finger, she would stop pumping him. So he maintained his head to his left side, looking and enjoying Chani’s angel sleeping face. And when she stirred Paul would press his finger inside and Jessica would stop her moves.

As the masturbation was gaining momentum Jessica begun to get worried. He would flood all over, messing everything and some drops could even reach Chani. Jessica had to avoid it. She released herself from Paul’s arm and continuing the motion of her hand, her head went below the covering robe so she could at the same time lick the tip of the penis each time her hand went down to it’s base and the head of his member would emerge in her fist. But playing her tongue with its tip was not enough and her hand released the member. Paul protested. But her mouth replaced her hand and engulfed it almost all so her throat, her tongue, her lips and even her teeth could work it. Her hand was free for a short time. She cupped his testicles and massaged them while one of her fingers threatened to invade his back hole.

Paul just trembled inside, psychologically. He could not move so he could not awake Chani. But his semen begun its travel from his testicles, through all the length of his penis to the warm receptacle of his mother’s mouth. At the same time the veins of his penis pumped more blood in a final effort, like a swan’s song. She sucked the exhausted penis lovingly in her mouth, to adore the precious water of love. She sucked it, tasted it and drunk it while her tongue made a final cleaning passage in all his penis skin pores.

Then, she left the robe, slightly raised up to spit in a robe’s wedge and clean the tip of his finger that had been slightly inside her.

Now they had to rest. They had to take benefit from the rest of the day. At night they would have tasks to perform and a path to follow.

 

***

 

In the stillness of the cavern, Jessica heard the scrape of sand on rock as people moved, the distant bird calls that Stilgar had said were the signals of his watchmen.

The great plastic hood-seals had been removed from the cave’s opening. She could see the march of evening shadows across the lip of rock in front of her and the open basin beyond.

She sensed the daylight leaving them, sensed it in the dry heat as well as the shadows. She knew her trained awareness soon would give her what these Fremen obviously had–the ability to sense even the slightest change in the air’s moisture.

How they had scurried to tighten their stillsuits when the cave was opened!

Deep within the cave, someone began chanting: "Ima trava okolo! I korenja okolo!"  
Jessica translated silently: These are ashes! And these are roots! "

The funeral ceremony for Jamis was beginning.

She looked out at the Arrakeen sunset, at the banked decks of color in the sky. Night was beginning to utter its shadows along the distant rocks and the dunes.

Yet the heat persisted.

Heat forced her thoughts onto water and the observed fact that this whole people could be trained to be thirsty only at given times.

Thirst.

She could remember moonlit waves on Caladan throwing white robes over rocks... and the wind heavy with dampness. Now the breeze that fingered her robes seared the patches of exposed skin at cheeks and forehead. The new nose plugs irritated her, and she found herself overly conscious of the tube that trailed down across her face into the suit, recovering her breath’s moisture.

The suit itself was a sweatbox.

"Your suit will be more comfortable when you’ve adjusted to a lower water content in your body," Stilgar had said.

She knew he was right, but the knowledge made this moment no more comfortable. The unconscious preoccupation with water here weighed on her mind. No, she corrected herself: it was preoccupation with moisture.

And that was a more subtle and profound matter.

She heard approaching footsteps, turned to see Paul come out of the cave’s depths trailed by the elfinfaced Chani. They hold each other’s hands.

There’s another thing, Jessica thought. Paul must be cautioned about their women. One of these desert women would not do as wife to a Duke. He could take her and love her as concubine, yes, but not as wife.

Then she wondered at herself, thinking: Have I been infected with his schemes? And she saw how well she had been conditioned. I can think of the marital needs of royalty without once weighing my own concubinage. Yet... I was more than concubine.

"Mother."

Paul stopped in front of her. Chani stood at his elbow. They had released their hands when they saw her, but without even noticing their bodies were still touching as they could join their strengths. Those two were becoming inseparable. In that moment the Fremen girl turned her beautiful bluish on blue eyes upon Jessica with such an endearing expression of affection that she tenderly pulled her into her arms, pressing the woman-girl into her chest and kissing softly her forehead.

“It is such a joy to hug you, Chani, you are a pearl among the Fremen, and I am so happy that Paul meet you!”

“A pearl?” she asked innocently.

“In Caladan is a richness, it is like literjons and literjons of water in Dune!” Jessica leaned and kissed the tip of her cute nose. Their nose plugs touched awkwardly. Jessica felt her perky breasts under the stillsuit pressing against her under bosom.

“You are an affectionate mother… I hope I can call you ‘my mother’ some day…” she tightened the embrace.

Paul moved, changing his weight from a foot to another, as those signs of affection between the two women made him suddenly uncomfortable. And yet they were beautiful in that warm embrace.

"Mother, do you know what they’re doing back there?"

Jessica deviated his eyes from Chani, looked at the dark patch of his eyes staring out from the hood. "I think so."

"Chani showed me... because I’m supposed to see it and give my... permission for the weighing of the water."

Jessica looked again to Chani’s lovely smiling face.

"They’re recovering Jamis’ water," Chani said, and her thin voice came out nasal past the nose plugs.

"It’s the rule. The flesh belongs to the person, but his water belongs to the tribe... except in the combat."

"They say the water’s mine," Paul said.

Jessica wondered why this should make her suddenly alert and cautious.

"Combat water belongs to the winner," Chani said. "It’s because you have to fight in the open without stillsuits. The winner has to get his water back that he loses while fighting."

"I don’t want his water," Paul muttered. He felt that he was a part of many images moving simultaneously in a fragmenting way that was disconcerting to the inner eye. He could not be certain what he would do, but of one thing he was positive: he did not want the water distilled out of Jamis’ flesh.

"It’s... water," Chani said, putting a hand on his chest to settle him down.

Jessica marveled at the way she said it. "Water." So much meaning in a simple sound. A Bene Gesserit axiom came to Jessica’s mind: "Survival is the ability to swim in strange water."

And Jessica thought: Paul and I, we must find the currents and patterns in these strange waters... if we’re to survive. And Chani will help us. I have trust in her.

"You will accept the water," Jessica said.

She recognized the tone in her voice. She had used that same tone once with Leto, telling her lost Duke that he would accept a large sum offered for his support in a questionable venture – because money maintained power for the Atreides.

On Arrakis, water was money. She saw that clearly.

Paul remained silent, knowing then that he would do as she ordered – not because she ordered it, but because her tone of voice had forced him to re-evaluate. To refuse the water would be to break with accepted Fremen practice and would disappoint Chani.

Presently Paul recalled the words of Kalima in Yueh’s O.C. Bible. He said: "From water does all life begin."

Jessica stared at him. Where did he learn that quotation? she asked herself. He hasn’t studied the mysteries.

"Thus it is spoken," Chani said. "Giudichar mantene: It is written in the Shah-Nama that water was the first of all things created."

For no reason she could explain (and this bothered her more than the sensation), Jessica suddenly shuddered. She leaved Chani and turned away to hide her confusion and was just in time to see the sunset. A violent calamity of color spilled over the sky as the sun dipped beneath the horizon.

"It is time!"

The voice was Stilgar’s ringing in the cavern. "Jamis’ weapon has been killed. Jamis has been called by Him, by Shai-hulud, who has ordained the phases for the moons that daily wane and – in the end – appear as bent and withered twigs." Stilgar ’s voice lowered. "Thus it is with Jamis."

Silence fell like a blanket on the cavern.

Jessica saw the gray-shadow movement of Stilgar like a ghost figure within the dark inner reaches.

She glanced back at the basin, sensing the coolness.

"The friends of Jamis will approach," Stilgar said.

Men moved behind Jessica, dropping a curtain across the opening. A single glowglobe was lighted overhead far back in the cave. Its yellow glow picked out an inflowing of human figures. Jessica heard the rustling of the robes.

Chani took a step away as though pulled by the light.

Jessica bent close to Paul’s ear, her breath making her son shiver, and she spoke in the family code: "Follow their lead; do as they do. It will be a simple ceremony to placate the shade of Jamis."

It will be more than that, Paul thought. And he felt a wrenching sensation within his awareness as though he were trying to grasp some thing in motion and render it motionless.

Chani glided back to Jessica’s side, took her hand softly in hers. "Come, Sayyadina. We must sit apart."

Paul watched them move off into the shadows, leaving him alone. He felt abandoned. He liked to be near both of them. The men who had fixed the curtain came up beside him.

"Come, Usul."

He allowed himself to be guided forward, to be pushed into a circle of people being formed around Stilgar, who stood beneath the glowglobe and beside a bundled, curving, and angular shape gathered beneath a robe on the rock floor.

The troop crouched down at a gesture from Stilgar, their robes hissing with the movement. Paul settled with them, watching Stilgar, noting the way the overhead globe made pits of his eyes and brightened the touch of green fabric at his neck. Paul shifted his attention to the robe-covered mound at Stilgar ’s feet, recognized the handle of a baliset protruding from the fabric.

"The spirit leaves the body’s water when the first moon rises," Stilgar intoned. "Thus it is spoken. When we see the first moon rise this night, whom will it summon?"

"Jamis," the troop responded.

Stilgar turned full circle on one heel, passing his gaze across the ring of faces. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. "When the hawk plane stooped upon us at Hole-in-the-Rock, it was Jamis pulled me to safety."

He bent over the pile beside him, lifted away the robe. "I take this robe as a friend of Jamis – leader ’s right." He draped the robe over a shoulder, straightening.

Now, Paul saw the contents of the mound exposed: the pale glistening gray of a stillsuit, a battered literjon, a kerchief with a small book in its center, the bladeless handle of a crysknife, an empty sheath, a folded pack, a paracompass, a distrans, a thumper, a pile of fist-sized metallic hooks, an assortment of what looked like small rocks within a fold of cloth, a clump of bundled feathers... and the baliset exposed beside the folded pack.  
So Jamis played the baliset, Paul thought. The instrument reminded him of Gurney Halleck and all that was lost. Paul knew with his memory of the future in the past that some chance-lines could produce a meeting with Halleck, but the reunions were few and shadowed. They puzzled him. The uncertainty factor touched him with wonder. Does it mean that something I will do... that I may do, could destroy Gurney... or bring him back to life... or... Paul swallowed, shook his head.

Again, Stilgar bent over the mound.

"For Jamis’ woman and for the guards," he said. The small rocks and the book were taken into the folds of his robe.

"Leader’s right," the troop intoned.

"The marker for Jamis’ coffee service," Stilgar said, and he lifted a flat disc of green metal.

"That it shall be given to Usul in suitable ceremony when we return to the sietch."

"Leader’s right," the troop intoned.

Lastly, he took the crysknife handle and stood with it.

"For the funeral plain," he said.

"For the funeral plain," the troop responded.

At her place in the circle across from Paul, Jessica nodded, recognizing the ancient source of the rite, and she thought: The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture – it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead. She looked across at Paul, wondering: Will he see it? Will he know what to do?

"We are friends of Jamis," Stilgar said. "We are not wailing for our dead like a pack of garvarg."

A gray-bearded man to Paul’s left stood up. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. He crossed to the mound, lifted the distrans. "When our water went below minim at the siege at Two Birds, Jamis shared." The man returned to his place in the circle.

Am I supposed to say I was a friend of Jamis? Paul wondered. Do they expect me to take something from that pile? He saw faces turn toward him, turn away. They do expect it!

Another man across from Paul arose, went to the pack and removed the paracompass. "I was a friend of Jamis," he said. "When the patrol caught us at Bight-of-the-Cliff and I was wounded, Jamis drew them off so the wounded could be saved." He returned to his place in the circle.

Again, the faces turned toward Paul, and he saw the expectancy in them, lowered his eyes.

An elbow nudged him and a voice hissed: "Would you bring the destruction on us?"

How can I say I was his friend? Paul wondered.

Another figure arose from the circle opposite Paul and, as the hooded face came into the light, he recognized his mother. She removed a kerchief from the mount. "I was a friend of Jamis," she said.

"When the spirit of spirits within him saw the needs of truth, that spirit withdrew and spared my son."

She returned to her place.

And Paul recalled the scorn in his mother ’s voice as she had confronted him after the fight.

"How does it f eel to be a killer?"

Again, he saw the faces turned toward him, felt the anger and fear in the troop. A passage his mother had once filmbooked for him on "The Cult of the Dead" flickered through Paul’s mind. He knew what he had to do.

Slowly, Paul got to his feet.

A sigh passed around the circle.

Paul felt the diminishment of his self as he advanced into the center of the circle. It was as though he lost a fragment of himself and sought it here. He bent over the mound of belongings, lifted out the baliset. A string twanged softly as it struck against something in the pile.

"I was a friend of Jamis," Paul whispered.

He felt tears burning his eyes, forced more volume into his voice. "Jamis taught me... that... when you kill... you pay for it. I wish I’d known Jamis better."

Blindly, he groped his way back to his place in the circle, sank to the rock floor.

A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!"

It was taken up around the ring: "Usul gives moisture to the dead!"

He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.

Jessica, hearing the voices, felt the depth of the experience, realized what terrible inhibitions there must be against shedding tears. She focused on the words: "He gives moisture to the dead." It was a gift to the shadow world– tears. They would be sacred beyond a doubt.

Nothing on this planet had so forcefully hammered into her the ultimate value of water. Not the watersellers, not the dried skins of the natives, not stillsuits or the rules of water discipline.

Here there was a substance more precious than all others–it was life itself and entwined all around with symbolism and ritual.

Water.

"I touched his cheek," someone whispered. "I felt the gift."

At first, the fingers touching his face frightened Paul. He clutched the cold handle of the baliset, feeling the strings bite his palm. Then he saw the faces beyond the groping hands–the eyes wide and wondering.

Presently, the hands withdrew. The funeral ceremony resumed. But now there was a subtle space around Paul, a drawing back as the troop honored him by a respectful isolation. The ceremony ended with a low chant: "Full moon calls thee– Shai-hulud shall thou see; Red the night, dusky sky, Bloody death didst thou die. We pray to a moon: she is round– Luck with us will then abound, What we seek for shall be found In the land of solid ground."

A bulging sack remained at Stilgar’s feet. He crouched, placed his palms against it. Someone came up beside him, crouched at his elbow, and Paul recognized Chani’s face in the hood shadow.

"Jamis carried thirty-three liters and seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms of the tribe’s water," Chani said. "I bless it now in the presence of a Sayyadina. Ekkeri-akairi, this is the water, fillissinfollasy of Paul-Muad’Dib! Kivi a-kavi, never the more, nakalas! Nakelas! to be measured and counted, ukair-an! by the heartbeats jan-jan-jan of our friend... Jamis."

In an abrupt and profound silence, Chani turned, stared at Paul. Presently she said:

"Where I am flame be thou the coals. Where I am dew be thou the water."

"Bi-lal kaifa," intoned the troop.

"To Paul-Muad’Dib goes this portion," Chani said. "May he guard it for the tribe, preserving it against careless loss. May he be generous with it in time of need. May he pass it on in his time for the good of the tribe."

"Bi-lal kaifa," intoned the troop.

I must accept that water, Paul thought. Slowly, he arose, made his way to Chani’s side.  
Stilgar stepped back to make room for him, took the baliset gently from his hand.

"Kneel," Chani said.

Paul knelt, happy to be her to order it, and not other Fremen.

She guided his hands to the waterbag, held them against the resilient surface. "With this water the tribe entrusts thee," she said. "Jamis is gone from it. Take it in peace." She stood, pulling Paul up with her. Their eyes met and smiled to each other without any move from their lips.

Stilgar returned the baliset, extended a small pile of metal rings in one palm. Paul looked at them, seeing the different sizes, the way the light of the glowglobe reflected off them.

Chani took the largest ring, held it on a finger. "Thirty liters," she said. One by one, she took the others, showing each to Paul, counting them. "Two liters; one liter; seven watercounters of one drachm each; one watercounter of three-thirty-seconds drachms. In all–thirty-three liters and seven and three- thirty-seconds drachms."

She held them up on her finger for Paul to see.

"Do you accept them?" Stilgar asked.

Paul swallowed, nodded. "Yes."

"Later," Chani said, "I will show you how to tie them in a kerchief so they won’t rattle and give you away when you need silence." She extended her hand.

"Will you... hold them for me?" Paul asked.

Chani showed a worried look and turned a startled glance on Stilgar.

He smiled, said, "Paul-Muad’Dib who is Usul does not yet know our ways, Chani. Hold his watercounters without commitment until it’s time to show him the manner of carrying them."

She nodded relieved with Stilgar’s answer, and opened her mouth with a wide smile, whipped a ribbon of cloth from beneath her robe, linked the rings onto it with an intricate over and under weaving, hesitated, then stuffed them into the sash beneath her robe.

I missed something there, Paul thought. He sensed the feeling of humor around him, something bantering in it, and his mind linked up a prescient memory: watercounters offered to a woman – courtship ritual. Wrong timing, correct words, he thought.

"Watermasters," Stilgar said.

The troop arose in a hissing of robes. Two men stepped out, lifted the waterbag. Stilgar took down the glowglobe, led the way with it into the depths of the cave.

Paul was pressed in behind Chani, noted the buttery glow of light over rock walls, the way the shadows danced, and he felt the troop’s lift of spirits contained in a hushed air of expectancy.

Jessica, pulled into the end of the troop by eager hands, hemmed around by jostling bodies,suppressed a moment of panic. She had recognized fragments of the ritual, identified the shards of Chakobsa and Bhotani-jib in the words, and she knew the wild violence that could explode out of these seemingly simple moments.

Jan-jan-jan, she thought. Go-go-go.

It was like a child’s game that had lost all inhibition in adult hands.

Stilgar stopped at a yellow rock wall. He pressed an outcropping and the wall swung silently away from him, opening along an irregular crack. He led the way through past a dark honeycomb lattice that directed a cool wash of air across Paul when he passed it.

Paul turned a questioning stare on Chani, tugged her arm. "That air felt damp," he said.

"Sh-h-h-h," she whispered with a smile in her face.

But a man behind them said: "Plenty of moisture in the trap tonight. Jamis’ way of telling us he’s satisfied."

Jessica passed through the secret door, heard it close behind. She saw how the Fremen slowed while passing the honeycomb lattice, felt the dampness of the air as she came opposite it.

Windtrap! she thought. They’ve a concealed windtrap somewhere on the surface to funnel air down here into cooler regions and precipitate the moisture from it.

They passed through another rock door with latticework above it, and the door closed behind them.

The draft of air at their backs carried a sensation of moisture clearly perceptible to both Jessica and Paul.

At the head of the troop, the glowglobe in Stilgar’s hands dropped below the level of the heads in front of Paul. Presently he felt steps beneath his feet, curving down to the left. Light reflected back up across hooded heads and a winding movement of people spiraling down the steps.

Jessica sensed mounting tension in the people around her, a pressure of silence that rasped her nerves with its urgency.

The steps ended and the troop passed through another low door. The light of the glowglobe was swallowed in a great open space with a high curved ceiling.

Paul felt Chani’s hand on his, their fingers played a battle, heard a faint dripping sound in the chill air, felt an utter stillness come over the Fremen in the cathedral presence of water.

I have seen this place in a dream, he thought.

The thought was both reassuring and frustrating. Somewhere ahead of him on this path, the fanatic hordes cut their gory path across the universe in his name. The green and black Atreides banner would become a symbol of terror. Wild legions would charge into battle screaming their war cry:

"Muad’Dib!"

It must not be, he thought. I cannot let it happen.

But he could feel the demanding race consciousness within him, his own terrible purpose, and he knew that no small thing could deflect the juggernaut. It was gathering weight and momentum. If he died this instant, the thing would go on through his mother and his unborn sister. Nothing less than the deaths of all the troop gathered here and now–himself and his mother included–could stop the thing.

Paul stared around him, saw the troop spread out in a line. They pressed him forward against a low barrier carved from native rock. Beyond the barrier in the glow of Stilgar’s globe, Paul saw an unruffled dark surface of water. It stretched away into shadows–deep and black–the far wall only faintly visible, perhaps a hundred meters away.

Jessica felt the dry pulling of skin on her cheeks and forehead relaxing in the presence of moisture.

The water pool was deep; she could sense its deepness, and resisted a desire to dip her hands and her body into it. Water in Arrakis! Water in Dune! And she would dive in it, she would swim in it!

A splashing sounded on her left. She looked down the shadowy line of Fremen, saw Stilgar with Paul standing beside him and the watermasters emptying their load into the pool through a flowmeter. The meter was a round gray eye above the pool’s rim. She saw its glowing pointer move as the water flowed through it, saw the pointer stop at thirty-three liters, seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms.

Superb accuracy in water measurement, Jessica thought. And she noted that the walls of the meter trough held no trace of moisture after the water’s passage. The water flowed off those walls without binding tension. She saw a profound clue to Fremen technology in the simple fact: they were perfectionists.

Jessica worked her way down the barrier to Stilgar’s side. Way was made for her with casual courtesy. She noted the withdrawn look in Paul’s eyes, but the mystery of this great pool of water dominated her thoughts.

Stilgar looked at her. "There were those among us in need of water," he said, "yet they would come here and not touch this water. Do you know that?"

"I believe it," she said.

He looked at the pool. "We have more than thirty-eight million decaliters here," he said.

"Walled off from the little makers, hidden and preserved."

"A treasure trove," she said.

Stilgar lifted the globe to look into her eyes. "It is greater than treasure. We have thousands of such caches. Only a few of us know them all." He cocked his head to one side. The globe cast a yellowshadowed glow across face and beard. "Hear that?"

They listened.

The dripping of water precipitated from the windtrap filled the room with its presence.  
Jessica saw that the entire troop was caught up in a rapture of listening. Only Paul seemed to stand remote from it.

To Paul, the sound was like moments ticking away. He could feel time flowing through him, the instants never to be recaptured. He sensed a need for decision, but felt powerless to move.

"It has been calculated with precision," Stilgar whispered. "We know to within a million decaliters how much we need. When we have it, we shall change the face of Arrakis."

A hushed whisper of response lifted from the troop: "Bi-lal kaifa."

"We will trap the dunes beneath grass plantings," Stilgar said, his voice growing stronger.

"We will tie the water into the soil with trees and undergrowth."

"Bi-lal kaifa," intoned the troop.

"Each year the polar ice retreats," Stilgar said.

"Bi-lal kaifa," they chanted.

"We shall make a homeworld of Arrakis–with melting lenses at the poles, with lakes in the temperate zones, and only the deep desert for the maker and his spice."

"Bi-lal kaifa."

"And no man ever again shall want for water. It shall be his for dipping from well or pond or lake or canal. It shall run down through the qanats to feed our plants. It shall be there for any man to take. It shall be his for holding out his hand."

"Bi-lal kaifa."

Jessica felt the religious ritual in the words, noted her own instinctively awed response.

They’re in league with the future, she thought. They have their mountain to climb. This is the scientist’s dream... and these simple people, these peasants, are filled with it.

Her thoughts turned to Liet-Kynes, the Emperor’s planetary ecologist, the man who had gone native – and she wondered at him. This was a dream to capture men’s souls, and she could sense the hand of the ecologist in it. This was a dream for which men would die willingly.

It was another of the essential ingredients that she felt her son needed; people with a goal.

Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism. They could be wielded like a sword to win back Paul’s place for him.

"We leave now," Stilgar said, "and wait for the first moon’s rising. When Jamis is safely on his way, we will go home."

Whispering their reluctance, the troop fell in behind him, turned back along the water barrier and up the stairs.

And Paul, walking behind Chani, his hand on her waist below the robes, felt that a vital moment had passed him, that he had missed an essential decision and was now caught up in his own myth. He knew he had seen this place before, experienced it in a fragment of prescient dream on faraway Caladan, but details of the place were being filled in now that he had not seen. He felt a new sense of wonder at the limits of his gift. It was as though he rode within the wave of time, sometimes in its trough, sometimes on a crest–and all around him the other waves lifted and fell, revealing and then hiding what they bore on their surface.

Through it all, the wild jihad still loomed ahead of him, the violence and the slaughter. It was like a promontory above the surf.

The troop filed through the last door into the main cavern. The door was sealed. Lights were extinguished, hoods removed from the cavern openings, revealing the night and the stars that had come over the desert.

Jessica moved to the dry lip of the cavern’s edge, looked up at the stars. They were sharp and near.

She felt the stirring of the troop around her, heard the sound of a baliset being tuned somewhere behind her, and Paul’s voice humming the pitch. There was a melancholy in his tone that she did not like.

Chani’s voice intruded from the deep cave darkness: "Tell me about the waters of your birthworld, Paul Muad’Dib."

And Paul: "Another time, Chani. I promise you. Another time!"

Such sadness.

"It’s a good baliset," Chani said.

"Very good," Paul said. "Do you think Jamis’ll mind my using it?"

He speaks of the dead in the present tense, Jessica thought. The implications disturbed her.

A man’s voice intruded: "He liked music betimes, Jamis did."

"Then sing me one of your songs," Chani pleaded.

Such feminine allure in that girl-child’s voice, Jessica thought. She was no Bene Gesserit but she was launching an innocent spell on him. I must caution Paul about their women... and soon. If not, he will fall in love…

"This was a song of a friend of mine," Paul said. "I expect he’s dead now, Gurney is. He called it his evensong."

The troop grew still, listening as Paul’s voice lifted in a sweet boy tenor with the baliset tinkling and strumming beneath it: "This clear time of seeing embers – A gold-bright sun’s lost in first dusk. What frenzied senses, desp’rate musk Are consort of rememb’ring."

Jessica felt the verbal music in her breast–pagan and charged with sounds that made her suddenly and intensely aware of herself, feeling her own body and its needs. She listened with a tense stillness. "Night’s pearl-censered requi-em... "Tis for us! What joys run, then – Bright in your eyes – What flower-spangled amores Pull at our hearts... What flower-spangled amores Fill our desires."

And Jessica heard the after-stillness that hummed in the air with the last note. Why does my son sing a love song to that girl-child? she asked herself. She felt an abrupt fear. She could sense life flowing around her and she had no grasp on its reins. Why did he choose that song? she wondered. The instincts are true sometimes. Why did he do this?

Paul sat silently in the darkness, a single stark thought dominating his awareness: My mother is my lover and my enemy. She does not know it, but she is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy because I don’t want the jihad. I just want her. I want Chani. And I want to avenge my father!


End file.
